Sweetbitter(45)

“Behind you,” he said. I froze at the pass, where I had been stacking clean quart containers. It was a narrow passage. The butane flames clicked in front of me. Behind, the staccato hits of knives on plastic cutting boards. My arm was raised and I collected it to my side and waited.

He placed his hand on my lower hip, or my upper thigh, or along the bottom seam of my underwear. He pushed me, moved me, and caught my hip with his other hand. Anyone else would have allowed me to move. Anyone else would have waited. He scraped roughly by.

“Excuse me,” he said. I did not have the weapons to fight back.

—

“DON’T STRANGLE the bottle, my love,” Simone said. She sat at an empty table in the mezz, her hair unfastened, the remains of a Burgundy in a glass in front of her, a gift from one of her tables. I had helped her finish her side work and now I opened wine while she watched. I relaxed my grip.

“You’re twisting the label away, keep it toward me.”

“I’m not turning it.”

“In Sicily you’re cursing a person when you hold the wine with the label turned away from them. Stop staring at it, look at me.”

“It’s not that turned. It’s better than before.”

“I don’t care about better than before, I care about correct.”

I grabbed a new bottle. I took the knife of my wine key and ran it around the lip.

“I can’t wait until everything is a screw top.”

“Bite your tongue. You’re twisting it again.”

“How do I get the knife all the way around without twisting it?”

She took the bottle from me and demonstrated, swiping the knife clockwise, then flipping her wrist open, the knife going from inside to out, and finishing the cut. The foil top popped off. She grabbed another bottle of the Bourgueil Cabernet Franc. We had a bottle of each of the house wines so I could really practice.

“Why do you know so much?”

“I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“No, everyone here has been doing this a long time. You know what I mean.”

“I find it impossible to do anything without investing in it. Even server work.”

“This job was supposed to be easy.”

“All jobs are easy for people averse to using their brains. I’m in a slight but stately minority who believes that dining is an art, just like life.”

I had made the cut. The foil cap came off in one perfect piece. I looked at her expectantly.

“Again” was all she said.

“But it’s not just that this job is hard. Most mornings I wake up thinking, I need an adult.”

“That’s you. You’re the adult.”

“No, you’re my adult,” I said and she smiled. “I don’t know. I haven’t done laundry since I moved here. I’m not lying.”

“That can happen in the beginning. Drop it off, pick it up.”

“I used to work out. Run at least.”

“That happens too. Join a gym.”

“I never go to the bank, I lose all my cash tips.”

“That’s just Park Bar, little one. Balance,” she said, gesturing toward the bottle I held almost horizontally. I leveled it, “floated it,” as she said, in midair.

“You could talk to Howard.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can schedule a one-on-one with Howard. All the managers have mandatory meetings but Howard opens it up to the servers as well. You can review your progress, or just vent about work. Ask him life questions.”

“Um…” I looked at her, trying to see what she meant. I felt like I was standing at the edge of something, or maybe back against something, and I remembered what Will had said about Simone and Howard. I thought of that anorexic hostess, Rebecca. I couldn’t even remember her face, all I recalled was her name on the schedule. “That’s a little weird, right? Besides, that’s why I have you.”

“I’m serious. He could advise you in ways I can’t.”

“Why can’t it be you?” I put the bottle down. “I don’t want to talk to him.”

“I see how hard it is for you to open up to people, but Howard is someone that could help you.”

“Help me what? Get all my friends in trouble? Have a nervous breakdown and move back home? Get transferred to another restaurant?”

Howard wasn’t so terrible. But his indifference with Rebecca, the way he erased her, upset me. And it felt like Simone was sending me away.

“Oh,” she said. She cooled considerably. “I wouldn’t go in for gossip. He has mentored a lot of girls like you.”

“Girls like me?” I looked at my hand, where a cut on my index finger had reopened.

“Young women, I’m sorry. Young women like you who have moved to the city and…” She waved her hand in the air.

“And what?” It came out loudly. Will looked up from the dining room below and I waved. And what?

“Listen, I will set it up for you, you can talk to him while I’m gone.”

“I don’t want to, Simone,” I said. My tone changed and I saw it affect her. I was telling her I wouldn’t. She touched her hair.

“Of course,” she said. “Well, you will need to continue working on your form for wine service. May I at least ask that you practice that?”